———-
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 20, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part I
-Mother Found Speaking before Illinois Federation of Labor Convention
On Wednesday December 4, 1918, Mother Jones was introduced at the Convention by John H. Walker, President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor. She stood before the delegates gathered together in Bloomington for the 36th Annual Convention of the Illinois F. of L. and gave a long and spirited address in which she said, in part:
Your President is not a member of the high class burglars’ association—he wouldn’t welcome me here if he was.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Workers, we are passing through the greatest change the world’s history has ever undertaken to bring man through. The world is making over, it is making into a new world, and it is up to the workers to say how that world will be shaped for the future destiny of the race. If we are indifferent to the change that is coming the future generations will pay the penalty.
I want to make a statement to you. I don’t live in your club rooms, I don’t belong to your parasitical type of woman, I am not a Sunday School teacher, I don’t work for Jesus—He don’t need me. I want to open the eyes of the workers…..
You and your organizations are up against a stone wall, and the most insidious machine that was ever organized in the human history is organized to break you. Are you going to let them do it? Or will you rise like men and tell them you are at the threshold of a new civilization, the map of the world is changing and you are going to change, too? You went abroad and cleaned up the kaiser, now let us clean up the kaisers at home!….
You know what the women did in New York. I went there to talk to the women. The women came to hear me. The commissioner of police sent a woman there who did not belong to my class. I spotted her immediately. She was one of Mrs. Belmont’s little lapdogs and when I began to talk she said I must be careful. She said she was the president of a number of organizations. One of them was a school decorating organization. I got the women worked up anyhow and they went out and cleaned up the scabs. The cops ran and the women with babies in their arms took the clubs and beat the cops. They were not Sunday School women, they were fighters. If the men had the fight in them those women had we would have won the battle in New York…..
Tom Mooney has been sentenced by order of the capitalists, the chamber of crooks, of California, to life imprisonment. I know Mooney, I know his wife, I know his mother. He has been a good fighter. He may have made a great noise at times, just as I have, but I know he had no more hand in the crime he is charged with, nor did any other working man, than I had, and I was a thousand miles away from San Francisco at that time. I am going to tour the nation and arouse the people to the injustice of that trial…..
We may never meet again. I am going back to West Virginia. The boys are waiting for me. We have a place we expect to reach soon. It is one of the places where a gun was put under my nose. The fellow who held it said he was going to send me to hell. I told him not to be in a hurry to do that because he would go ahead of me, and I would get a ton of coal to burn his carcass. We are going to organize that spot. I am not going to say where it is, because the spotters are here.
I may have offended some people here today by what I have said, but that will not bother me—I will sleep just as well tonight as though I hadn’t said it. I will not say good by; I never say that, because when I pass beyond I will still be with you. You are fortunate to have such a hall as this to meet in today. I remember the day we met in the woods in the cold and wet. Now stand together. If you are a united force there is no power in the world that can affect you…..
[Emphasis added.]
Motion Put Forth by President Walker
I believe there is nothing we can do that will tend to focus public opinion on that case more than to put in the hands of Mother Jones the authority to take the matter up with the governor of California and demand a new trial. A new trial will be better than a pardon for Mooney, because it will enable us to uncover the real criminals in this case. In order to keep public attention focused on this case, in the event the governor refuses to do the thing that is right, we should authorize Mother Jones to represent our organization in taking the matter up further with the President of the United States.
I therefore move you that Mother Jones be authorized to represent the Illinois State Federation of Labor officially in taking the matter up with Governor Stephens of California, request him to give Tom Mooney a new trial, and if he refuses that she be authorized to take it up with the President of the United States and ask him to use his best offices to that end.
[Emphasis added.]
Walker’s motion was seconded and carried by unanimous vote of the Convention.
—————
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part I
From the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph of December 3, 1918:
Labor Body Sets Forth Its “Fourteen Points”
—–
Declaration on Which New Political Party Is To Be Founded
Are Promulgated in First Day of State Federation
Meeting in This City.
—–
Atmosphere of Convention Surcharged With Political Expectancy
-Spirited Contest Already on For Location of Next Year’s
Gathering-Large Chicago Delegation Present.
—–The thirty-sixth annual convention of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, pregnant with issues of paramount importance to the labor movement in Illinois and the nation, opened yesterday morning at 10 o,clock at the new high school building on East Washington street. The creative powers of the federation and evidences of the characteristics of the yet unborn but undoubted offspring of the convention have accumulated interest outside the labor movement.
Chief interest within and without labor circles is centered about the new political party which promises to spring forth from the sessions of the convention…..
A telegram was read at the morning session from Mother Jones stating that she would reach the convention if it was possible to do so. This announcement was greeted with a round of applause. She was credited by the secretary [Secretary-Treasurer Victor A. Olander] with doing more in behalf of labor than perhaps any other person in the nation…..
[Emphasis added.]
From the Reno Evening Gazette of December 4, 1918:
“MOTHER” MARY JONES TO PLEAD FOR MOONEY
—–BLOOMINGTON. Ill., Dec. 4.-“Mother” Mary Jones was today nominated by the Illinois Federation of Labor, in session here, as a delegate to call on the governor of California to intercede on behalf of Thomas Mooney and if need be to carry the case to the President of the United States. This action was taken following a spirited address by “Mother” Jones.
———-
[Emphasis added.]
From the Proceedings of Convention of the Illinois Federation of Labor
-Wednesday Morning, December 4, 1918:
President Walker: If it were left to us to choose what we are going to be when we come into the world we would choose a good physique, good mentality and a good disposition. However, we are not allowed to choose and it is a matter of accident so far as we are concerned, as to what characteristics we have. However, the characteristics we have determine what we will be throughout life. Those who have mental defects may become dishonest and untruthful; those with poor physiques cannot work—and some of them don’t like to work, which is worse. Some people of the world are favored by nature, they are endowed with good physiques, good mentality and good dispositions. And while some day a good conscience will be recognized as having been the thing that made for human progress and betterment more than anything else in the world, at the present time, so far as the individual that has got it is concerned, it is a mighty bad handicap. At the same time when people have that kind of conscience, that kind of mentality, that kind of disposition and physique there is only one thing they can do; they will do the thing that is right, they will work persistently, intelligently and courageously, they will work as long as they live—and usually they live long.
I am saying this so that you will not give Mother Jones any special credit for what she has done. She has been endowed with all these things by nature and she could not help herself. Out of about twenty two years’ experience since I first met Mother Jones she has been trying to get the workers to interest themselves in the things that would make their own conditions better, to get them to organize, to help them in their struggles, and, as a result of her activities, hundreds of thousands of men and women have a better understanding of what real life means and what should be done to enable the whole human race to live that kind of life.
I take pleasure in agreeing that I am one of those who have benefited by Mother Jones’ work. She is here at the beginning of the reconstruction period we are just going into, with over a million people in the army, navy and war industries, about to be thrown into competition with the men and women employed in occupations of peace, and possibly we will be tested more severely than ever before in our lives to hold our balance, not make mistakes, and take advantage of the things that will enable us to make progress.
Mother Jones has honored the Illinois labor movement by believing that, being helpful here, it may be helpful throughout the rest of the country. She is here this morning to say a word to us on the problems of the working people at the present time, and I take exceeding great pleasure in introducing Mother Jones and saying she is as welcome as a human being can be, and we want her to say what she wants to, all she wants to, and say it in her own way.
Address of Mother Jones.
Your President is not a member of the high class burglars’ association—he wouldn’t welcome me here if he was.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Workers, we are passing through the greatest change the world’s history has ever undertaken to bring man through. The world is making over, it is making into a new world, and it is up to the workers to say how that world will be shaped for the future destiny of the race. If we are indifferent to the change that is coming the future generations will pay the penalty.
I want to make a statement to you. I don’t live in your club rooms, I don’t belong to your parasitical type of woman, I am not a Sunday School teacher, I don’t work for Jesus—He don’t need me. I want to open the eyes of the workers. I know what is going on, have my ear to the ground. I am pretty well posted, let me tell you. I take a trip once in a while to get next to some things, and I generally get the goods.
Yesterday you discussed the ballot here. I am going to make a statement right here and now about that. I went through the political labor movement when Wendell Phillips was running for governor of Massachusetts on a labor platform. I was a member of the Greenback Party, which was sold out in Cincinnati when it reached its height. I then joined the Farmers’ Alliance. That went by the board, too. Then I be longed to the Populist Party. That was handed over to the high class burglars in St. Louis, to the fellow that don’t want us to drink a glass of beer, old William J. Bryan. I belonged to the Socialist Party—I am yet a Socialist and always will be. I believe in its philosophy, it is the real philosophy of the working people; but I don’t believe in sky pilots, legal hold-ups, pencil-pushers, pill-peddlers and newspaper men dictating to me, I tell you that. And that is what is the matter. I belonged to it many long years ago.
We used to hold meetings in Kansas. I captured Champ Clark’s meeting when he was running for congress. I happened to drive up in a buggy drawn by an old white horse. They were having a meeting in a tent. The people gathered around me. A fellow took hold of my horse and said he would hold him so he wouldn’t run away. I said:
There’s no danger of his running away. He’s blind. That horse belonged to a republican and he became blind in one eye. Then a democrat bought him and he became blind in both eyes. Now I have got him and he can see and hear, and he can raise hell with me.
They sent down for the chief of police to arrest me and put me in jail. He said he wouldn’t touch me, that the people would tear the jail down if he did. So Champ Clark didn’t get the crowd.
I have been in states where the women had the ballot. I have no prejudice, but I tell you there is no state where the woman has had the ballot where she has improved the conditions of the workers. Women have had the ballot for twenty-eight years in Colorado. I am one woman who asked Governor Waite not to give them the ballot.
[I told him:]
This state bids fair to be one of the most progressive states in the Union, and if you give them the ballot you will drive us backwards. The women don’t understand this thing and it will put us back twenty-five years.
Other influences got his ear and he gave them the ballot. Two years later I met him in St. Louis and he said he wished he had listened to me.
In Colorado where the women had the ballot for twenty-eight years they burned the children on the altar of dollars, and the women made no move. No nation will ever move until the women put aside their parasitical thoughts and get out and fight. In Utah the women had the ballot. In that state they took one hundred and thirty of my brothers out of the tents in the morning and drove them for three miles with bayonets and guns. Read the report made before the Industrial Commission in Washington of testimony that was given by a minister. The women tried to get him out of town because he was trying to emancipate the workers. I am going to tell the truth, and I don’t care if all the parasitical cats in the nation get up a club to raise hell with me. I have no confidence in the ballot for women.
You doubtless know by this time that we will have a multimillionaire for United States Senator and, Mother, I don’t need to tell you that he is a strong factor in the United States Steel Corporation. The criminal ramifications of that corporation extend into our entire industrial life in this nation. It seems a greater misfortune could not have befallen us at this time, especially during the reconstruction period.
That is from the governor of Colorado. A member of the Steel Trust for Senator and women have the ballot in that state! What good will the ballot do you? I never used it, but I will tell you what I am after, boys. You get together on the economic field and organize, organize, organize. Organize industrially and I don’t care about Taft nor Roosevelt nor Gary nor the whole damn gang—you will clean them up. If you organize on the economic field and stand together like men there will be no danger of their hurting you. You have the power, and they know it. The great brains of the world do not come from their ranks. The men who have done the great things in life have come from below. They exercised their muscles in childhood and their brains developed with them.
Some one referred to our strike in West Virginia yesterday. Well, it was a bitter strike, but there is no question but it brought results. In 1903 I made a trip up Cabin Creek. The mine owners and their henchmen were there. There were perhaps twelve or fourteen hundred men in the crowd. When I got through my speech to the boys I said:
My advice to you is to get some good reading matter, go up in the mountains under the trees and read rather than go to the pool room and the saloon.
I sold eight or nine hundred copies of Robert Blackford’s “Merrie England” that day. The company sent for the books. The day I left there was not an unorganized man in Cabin Creek, every single man was in the United Mine Workers.
I went away and was gone for more than nine years. One morning in Butte I took up a paper. I was out there working for the machinists of the Southern Pacific system. The papers said the Paint Creek Colliery Company would not settle with the miners, they would not recognize the union. That colliery company is the Steel Trust. I went back without telling any one—I haven’t any boss. I went to Charleston and took the local train to Paint Creek. A little boy came to me and asked if I was going to stay. I told him I was. He told me they had beaten his father, his mother, his little sister and himself. I asked who did it and he said the gunmen. The boy’s mother had six little children and her husband had been blacklisted and driven away.
I said I would clean up that situation before I got through. The military were there in plain clothes, but I knew them. I started to fight. I went down along the river and kept going. One night about two o’clock two young fellows came for me. They were kids when I was there before. They said they had been at Charleston and nobody would come back with them, that the miners’ officers in Charleston had said: “What do you take us for? Do you want us to be killed?” I asked them why they did not ask those officers why they took the miners’ money if they didn’t want to take any risk. I said I would go with them. They told me I might be killed. I said:
I can die no more glorious death than to die fighting for my kind.
I went to Charleston. I wrote several letters and sent them away. One was to a person in Washington telling him in case anything happened to me what he should do. About seven o’clock that evening an officer of the international organization came. Now, I want to open your eyes to some things. He said: “I hear you are going to Cabin Creek, Mother.” I said I was, that it was time someone should go there. “Now, you had better keep hands off as long as you didn’t go before,” I told him. He said they didn’t know what was going to happen, and I told him they couldn’t do any more than arrest me; but he said he represented the international and they could sue the organization. He said: “Keep your hands off and don’t dare go up there!”
When he left me he went direct to the governor and asked for a company of militia to go up and watch me. He went to the sheriff and he got a detective. I didn’t see them until I got off the train. I didn’t see the militia until I got off the train, although they were on the train. The conductor came and said: “You have good company,” and I thought he was talking about himself! The militia were in a special car. I had sent out the bills, but didn’t mention who would address the meeting, what the purpose was or anything about it. Fifteen hundred men came down over the mountains, and this fellow got up on the wagon and said he was going to talk fifteen minutes. “You are not going to talk at all; this is my meeting,” said I. He said he was going to talk, that he had made arrangements with the chairman to introduce him. He got up on the wagon and was introduced. Then he began telling those starved, crushed wretches that he was an international officer and they would have to do as he told them; that they must be peaceful and pay attention to no one else. “International hell,” said I “get out of here! I am running this meeting, not the international!” And I landed him down.
I talked for about half an hour. The men asked if I would organize them and I told them I would. I told them I would organize them into the United Mine Workers, and asked them if they would stay. They said they were willing to swear that they would if they were organized. So I organized them in the presence of the military, the gunmen and the mine owners. They said they had no money and I told them not to bother about that, that I would get the money, that I would hold up some fellow for it if I couldn’t get it any other way. I told them to go to work in the morning and not say a word about the meeting. I knew, of course, they would be discharged, and they were. Then the battle was on, but we kept it up and won out. We gave the gunmen a free pass and they didn’t come back to us any more. From that day to this those men have been organized.
Two hundred were arrested and put into the bull pen. I had gone down to Boomer to stop an uprising of the miners. They called out a special company of the militia. They arrested those two hundred men who had broken no law and put them in a bull pen in the capital city. I had gone down to keep the peace until we could reach the government in Washington, but they picked us up on the street. The civil courts were open, the judges were sitting on the bench, but I was taken twenty miles and handed over to the militia. They kept me there three months. Some one said I turned the searchlight of the national government on them and before they got through they were sorry they put me there. I said I didn’t want to get out, that I could raise more hell in jail any day than I could if I was out—I never was afraid of their jails.
When we went into the military court two lawyers were appointed to defend me. I said:
Gentlemen, I have nothing against you, but there isn’t a lawyer in the United States that can defend me before this court. It is an unconstitutional institution. I have nothing against, you personally but I have against the position you hold.
When I went into court I said to the judge advocate:
This is an unconstitutional court. I resent your trying me. The civil courts are open, and they were established by my forefathers to try me.
I was tried any how and sentenced to the bull pen for twenty years. They took all the men away and I was a lone prisoner in that military camp for five weeks. One day the window was opened a little bit and a rolled-up paper dropped in. It said. “Wall Street telephoned to Senator Kern not to push that investigation for West Virginia and he would be amply compensated.” It was at night, the article said, and they did not send a messenger or a telegram—they took the quickest way to reach him.
I played a game on the military the first day I went in, and they didn’t get onto it. I wrote Senator Kern from the military prison and said:
I send to you the groans and tears and heartaches of men, women and children as I have heard them in this state for years. I have just passed over the eighty-third milestone in my career. I plead with you in behalf of these men, women and children. For the honor of the nation push that investigation.
The governor sent a messenger, too. He sent it to an old guy who was the lapdog of the interests. When this man sat down, after reading the message, Senator Kern came down from the gallery where he had been sitting with his wife and said: “I, too, have a telegram from that place where a woman of eighty-three years is detained.” Then he read my telegram. Immediately after that a commission was appointed. They came down, uncovered a diabolical conspiracy with the chamber of commerce, the mine owners and the state administration. I was turned loose one hour after that telegram was read on the floor of the senate, and my boys were turned loose, too.
Senator Kern saved the miners’ organization two hundred thousand dollars it would have had to spend for crooked lawyers to save our boys, yet when he came up for re-election he was defeated. So I have no faith in your ballots, not one bit. The money power controls the ballot, the press and everything else. You cannot win out with the ballot, but you can do as we did in West Virginia. I know you will object to some of my statements, but I am going to tell you the truth. You and your organizations are up against a stone wall, and the most insidious machine that was ever organized in the human history is organized to break you. Are you going to let them do it? Or will you rise like men and tell them you are at the threshold of a new civilization, the map of the world is changing and you are going to change, too? You went abroad and cleaned up the kaiser, now let us clean up the kaisers at home! They didn’t subscribe their millions, they loaned them to the government and received four per cent on them.
When the civil war broke out in this country the Senate controlled the affairs of this nation. They voted away the lands, they grabbed everything. They sold as much as would cover one state of Texas, and they laid the foundation for the divine right of dollars. They didn’t call it the divine right of kings, but they called it the divine right of dollars, and it has ruled your legislatures from that day to this.
Now, about this last election. This was mailed to me from Wall street: “The manufacturers who are members of the War Labor Board should have resigned immediately when the President decided to take over the Smith & Wesson Company’s plant. This seems to be the general sentiment among the manufacturers throughout the country, that it was undoubtedly the rawest deal ever given an honest business man.” The thieves!
“When that body practically decided that business men of executive ability and those who have built up their business cannot run it unless they accept conditions, laid down by strike agitators and labor traitors. The War Labor Board today, exclusive of the few manufacturers on it, is an American Federation of Labor proposition, carefully guided by the American Federation of Labor Attorney.” That is [Frank P.] Walsh.
“If it is left to go on it will unionize all manufacturing plants in the United States doing war work. It is an un-American institution, and the best way to offset the present tendency is for the manufacturers and non-union wage workers to help elect a Republican congress next November. Put in twice as much funds as we have ever put in a campaign before. The Democratic majority must be overcome. When that is done the President’s hands can be tied and the War Labor Board relegated to the scrap pile.” And then they had a wire out—and it was a well oiled wire—to keep us fighting and snarling at each other. Bury the hatchet, shake hands and tell the manufacturers you are going to organize.
We are going to establish a co-operative laundry here in Bloomington. You go down to those thieves and get your clothes washed. I would wash my clothes in the gutter before I would do it. The idea of working men who have the power to establish their own institutions paying to make other fellows rich! It is a fright when you come to think about it!
Now, boys, I went into the courts when the I. W. W.’s were tried. I was coming in from the West and stopped over in Chicago a day or two. I looked over that body of men in the court very carefully. Some of them fought with me in battles we had in the past, and they were pretty good fighters. I will give them credit for that. I didn’t always agree with them, however. That day when I went into court someone asked me if I wasn’t afraid to be there. “Afraid of what?” I asked. “Afraid of the American Federation of Labor!” “The American Federation of Labor doesn’t own me.” They asked if I wasn’t afraid of the higher-ups? I said none of the higher-ups could get me, that I wasn’t afraid of any one, the court or any one else. I do not break the civil laws, but wherever members of my class are in the hands of the common enemy I am going there. I gave them thirty dollars, right before the secret service men. I sold some books and gave them the profits.
Listen to this:
People ask what is the secret of the I. W. W.’s? It is not the machinations of the foreign foe. Machinations may be there, but there must be soil prepared in advance. We cannot blame Germany for the I. W. W.’s; we must blame ourselves. There is, something rotten, something wrong in our social system that allows men to be so bitter against society as they are. There will be, as there is now, a great menace in this country from disaffected labor, when men feel the industrial machinery grinds along indifferent to their welfare, throwing them off at intervals.
That is very different from the statement made in the Congress at Laredo, Texas. These men were made I. W. W.’s by a rotten, brutal system. I am going to their rescue and I am going to Washington to see if I can not do something to get them out. And, Mr. Chairman, I want this convention to go on record that every man arrested during the war period be turned loose. That will have to be done if we are going to have democracy. I know those men.
You cannot blame me if I tell my boys to wake up. You have seen what we did in West Virginia. In five weeks we organized 17,000 miners, who for twenty-five years had felt the iron heel of the corporations on their necks. I was carried eighty-four miles in the night to jail and taken into the federal courts from that very place. I went down to Monongahela with a parade. When we got there a fellow was teaching Sunday School. He came out and took hold of my horse that was being driven by a little boy. He said I couldn’t move on. I asked who he was. He said he was a Sunday School teacher, but I took him by the back of the neck and he didn’t teach for four or five weeks. That is the way to do business with them.
It was one o’clock in the morning before we got home. We had eight organizers to do that whole business. You see what can be done. We got the first contract ever made there and we didn’t have any poker playing there, either. They will never gamble with the miners’ money while I am around. I have spotted the gang, and you bet your life if they don’t behave they will have to get out. You have got to work when you come into West Virginia—you can’t sit in a hotel and take it easy. You must earn your money or get out of the state. I am boss so far as that part of it is concerned.
Now I want to talk to you women. Get down to the fundamentals of this disease and do business. In the ages yet to come there will be registered against you women of the twentieth century the fact that babies were killed in Colorado, where the women have had the ballot for twenty-eight years, and they never said a word. The governor knew three weeks before that thing was going to take place. After the women and children were killed the women of Colorado wanted to go down to Ludlow to investigate. They investigated. Yes, they called the fellow who burned up the children “Your Honor.” I have no patience with such cats! They are too nice! Jails are filled with the workers, while the other class own the governors, the senate, the congress. The children of the future will pay the penalty.
I plead with you men to stand together. Work and organize. Bury the hatchet and work to build up a tremendous organization. You have the power to change this world into a new world. Will you be able to do it? Are you men enough to meet the occasion? And will you women get together and organize? Don’t bother about your Mrs. Belmont or your Mrs. any one else. Have nothing to do with them—they live off your bones. Get down and work for the nation’s honor and future. Put away your nonsense—forty-nine feathers on the outside of your skulls and nothing on the insides!
It takes money to run these conventions, boys, and I don’t feel I should waste any more of it. I was told I could not go into Colorado. I left Washington and went there. I went to the hotel and two detectives were in the lobby. There were two others at the railroad gate. I got a ticket. A fellow with a button, a humane officer who takes care of dogs and cats, said: “I hear you are going to Trinidad.” I said I was going. He asked me when I was going to leave and I told him the last of the week. He said: “Will you tell me when you are going, because I want to go on the train with you?” I said, “Sure, I want you to be on the train.” He was a Field detective and thought I didn’t know it! Why, I can smell one of them for four miles!
I went to the yards and got on the sleeper. I had the conductor stop the train on the outskirts of Trinidad and I got off. I was in the hotel three hours before they knew I was there. The governor said he was having me well watched and I couldn’t get out of town without his knowing it. When I got to Trinidad there was one old gray-headed woman there and three hundred troops. The old woman had them all scared.
If you had the brains of the old farmer in West Virginia you would get somewhere. The telephone company sent linemen to plant poles on this farmer’s land. He told them they couldn’t do it, that the land was his. The linemen said the telephone company could do as it pleased. The farmer went into his house, got a shotgun and the men got over fence and went back to town. He told them not to come back again.
In a couple of days the telephone men were back and the farmer came down again with his shotgun. “Didn’t I tell you not to come back?” he asked. “Yes, but this time we are prepared for you. The telephone company has an order of the court.” They read the order of the court to the old farmer and he took his shotgun back to the house. Then he went to the barn where a ferocious animal was tied up. He opened the door and said: “Get out and go after them.” A big bull rushed out and reared over the fence.
“Say, Mr. Farmer.” said the telephone men, “take your bull in.” “You take him in,” said the farmer. “We can’t do anything, we have got to plant the poles.” “Didn’t I tell you to plant them?” said the farmer. “Yes,” said the men, “but not until we read the order of court to you.” “Read the order of the court to the bull,” said the farmer. The bull licked the telephone company and the courts because he used his head. We have got to learn to do the same thing, boys.
Now I will tell you what brought me here. I want to pay my respects to the street car men that won the battle here in one night. There is a Mrs. Patterson here in Bloomington that I want to pay my respect to. If we could duplicate that woman and organize an army like her we could change things. We need more such women as Mrs. Patterson. She sent her children to her mother and went out and fought for the street car men night and day. I came here on account of the street car men. I under stand you have fourteen rotten scabs on the outside of the city running those street cars. Have you got them?
A Delegate: Yes.
Mother, Jones: And you let them stay here? Now you put them out of business. Tell the company we are not going to ride on scab street cars.
A Delegate: We have twenty-two scabs on the street cars.
Mother Jones: And how many of the other street car men are there.
A Delegate: There are eighty-five altogether.
Mother Jones: And twenty-two sewer rats can get the best of the others? What do you think of that? We haven’t a scab now in, the Fairmont region of West Virginia; every man is in the union and no scab runs a car there.
You know what the women did in New York. I went there to talk to the women. The women came to hear me. The commissioner of police sent a woman there who did not belong to my class. I spotted her immediately. She was one of Mrs. Belmont’s little lapdogs and when I began to talk she said I must be careful. She said she was the president of a number of organizations. One of them was a school decorating organization. I got the women worked up anyhow and they went out and cleaned up the scabs. The cops ran and the women with babies in their arms took the clubs and beat the cops. They were not Sunday School women, they were fighters. If the men had the fight in them those women had we would have won the battle in New York.
Tom Mooney has been sentenced by order of the capitalists, the chamber of crooks, of California, to life imprisonment. I know Mooney, I know his wife, I know his mother. He has been a good fighter. He may have made a great noise at times, just as I have, but I know he had no more hand in the crime he is charged with, nor did any other working man, than I had, and I was a thousand miles away from San Francisco at that time. I am going to tour the nation and arouse the people to the injustice of that trial. Mooney must either be pardoned or go to the scaffold.
They didn’t take the fellow in New York that was responsible for the murder of a hundred people in a street car when he put a scab on to run it. They didn’t arrest the men in West Virginia who went up the mountain and murdered six of my brothers while they slept. They didn’t arrest the men who went up in the death special in the mountains of West Virginia one night and shot the feet off a woman who was going to give birth to a child. They didn’t arrest the man who killed our boys in Cabin Creek or in Ludlow.
You must demand a change in the judiciary. Ninety-five of your brothers were sent to the penitentiary. Five of them died while they were there and fourteen others contracted tuberculosis. In California seventy five of them were put in jail and five of them died. It is murder! The courts of this country must be changed. If there is any institution we must respect and feel we are going to get justice in it is the courts. Our judges are prejudiced. The literature they read and the sermons they hear are poisoning them against us.
The other day I sent Mooney one hundred dollars, I sold books while I was holding meetings and the hundred dollars was the profits off the books I sold. If you are true to yourselves and your families you will render a decision here that Mooney must have a new trial. If he is guilty, let the courts prove it. If he is not guilty, we don’t want him behind the bars for life. I would rather be hung than go to the penitentiary. If they ever get me I want them to hang me rather than send me to the bull pen for life.
Now, Mr. Chairman, have the convention pass that resolution asking that Mooney be turned free. We are not going to stand for workingmen being murdered by the judges and the governors. We will send a telegram across the ocean to President Wilson. You do business in this convention in Illinois. Forget all about your fights for office and get down to business. If you are going to save yourselves you must elect good officers. I am telling you something I know all about. The wire is tapped to divide you—I am on to the game. I have no fear but what you are going to do right. I have confidence in you.
We have fine officers in West Virginia now, splendid boys that cannot be touched. They are true blue. There is one man, Frank Keeney, that changed the whole program in West Virginia. He revolutionized the whole thing. When one was elected I said:
I am going to give you some advice. Don’t ever go to take dinner with a mine owner, a superintendent, a boss or a judge. Sit across the table and do business with them, tell them you represent an army of workers that demand justice. If you do that you will leave a heritage to your children that all the money in the world will not equal.
And those boys have followed my advice.
I took the bit in my mouth, went out and elected some of those men myself. I am not ashamed of it. I said to the miners:
If you elect one of the gang you have in office now I will go through the state and denounce you as being crooks and slaves.
And they didn’t elect one of the officers I warned them against. Then those fellows tried to get the old woman out of West Virginia, but she wouldn’t go out. If they send any more poker players in there we will poke them out.
Organize and get together, then stand together. I have now entered my eighty-ninth year. I don’t know that we will meet again. The work I am going to do is rather strenuous and last summer’s work was an awful strain. We didn’t get in until one and two o’clock in the morning. Often we went out at seven in the morning and had nothing to eat all day.
I am speaking particularly to the miners now. Stand together, keep your organization, do some reading. Get books on economics and keep posted. Don’t swallow the dope in the capitalist press. Get your own. Every other organization asks before it moves: “What are the miners going to do about it?” You are the foundation of the labor movement in this country. Remember the men who died in the mines. Today a man is more tired after working eight hours than the men were twenty years ago when they worked twelve hours. Then they dug the coal, now they have to get down and shovel it after the machines. Often they are too tired to eat their suppers when they get home. The machine has taken the place of the muscles. Now we must use the machines for our own benefit and not make so many millionaires.
We may never meet again. I am going back to West Virginia. The boys are waiting for me. We have a place we expect to reach soon. It is one of the places where a gun was put under my nose. The fellow who held it said he was going to send me to hell. I told him not to be in a hurry to do that because he would go ahead of me, and I would get a ton of coal to burn his carcass. We are going to organize that spot. I am not going to say where it is, because the spotters are here.
I may have offended some people here today by what I have said, but that will not bother me—I will sleep just as well tonight as though I hadn’t said it. I will not say good by; I never say that, because when I pass beyond I will still be with you. You are fortunate to have such a hall as this to meet in today. I remember the day we met in the woods in the cold and wet. Now stand together. If you are a united force there is no power in the world that can affect you.
The boys are coming home from the army. There are eight million women in industry now, and that is another problem that will have to be met. In the meetings in Europe there will be syndicalists, I. W. W.’s, socialists and trade unionists. They will have something to say in this reconstruction, and no power can stop them, for the workers of the world are waking up and coming into their own.
Delegate Birkhold, Metal Polishers: I move you that we extend a rising vote of thanks to Mother Jones for her address.
The motion was seconded and carried by unanimous vote.
First Vice-President McGrath in chair.
President Walker: In view of the fact that Mother Jones expects to take up the question of the Mooney case throughout the country, and because the Mooney case is in such a shape that when the people of the country understand it thoroughly it will mean that the men responsible for this infamous conspiracy and attempt to murder this man judicially, and fasten on the labor movement the stigma of that bomb explosion, will fasten the crime on them, and because that evidence is in our hands now and they are afraid to keep Mooney in jail and afraid to let him out, and the longer they keep him and the stronger we focus public opinion on the facts in that case the more the people will be able to understand the extremes to which the opposition goes to crush the workers’ organizations the more sympathy they will have for our movement, the better they will understand the other side and realize the needs of its control by the workers’ organizations.
I believe there is nothing we can do that will tend to focus public opinion on that case more than to put in the hands of Mother Jones the authority to take the matter up with the governor of California and demand a new trial. A new trial will be better than a pardon for Mooney, because it will enable us to uncover the real criminals in this case. In order to keep public attention focused on this case, in the event the governor refuses to do the thing that is right, we should authorize Mother Jones to represent our organization in taking the matter up further with the President of the United States.
I therefore move you that Mother Jones be authorized to represent the Illinois State Federation of Labor officially in taking the matter up with Governor Stephens of California, request him to give Tom Mooney a new trial, and if he refuses that she be authorized to take it up with the President of the United States and ask him to use his best offices to that end.
The motion was seconded and carried by unanimous vote.
President Walker in the chair…..
The delegates arose and sang “America” prior to adjournment.
At 12 o’clock the convention was adjourned to 2 o’clock p. m. of the same day.
[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Kaisers at Home, Speech Bloomington IL FoL, Dec 4, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA160
The Daily Pantagraph
(Bloomington, Illinois)
-Dec 3, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/69195960/
Reno Evening Gazette
(Reno, Nevada)
-Dec 4, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/147032204/
Proceedings of Annual Conventions of the Illinois Federation of Labor of 1917 &1918, Volumes 35-36
https://books.google.com/books?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ
Proceedings Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention
-Dec 2-7, 1918 at Bloomington, Illinois
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA325
Officers elected April 1, 1918
(President-John H. Walker, 1st VP-John P. McGrath, SecTre-Victor A. Olander)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA88
Labor’s Fourteen Points
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA134
Wednesday, Dec 4, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA154
President Walker introduces Mother Jones
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA156
Address of Mother Jones
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA157
Mother Jones authorized to represent IL F of L before
Gov Stephens of CA regarding Mooney Case.
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mkFEAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA165
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Ft Wy Jr Gz p3, Dec 17, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29086040/
See also:
Tag: Mooney-Billings Case
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mooney-billings-case/
John H Walker
http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/hall-of-honor-articles/2011
Note: In her speech, Mother Jones is recounting experiences from many years spent organizing, especially for the United Mine Workers, in West Virginia and Colorado. The following books are good references to learn more about her long and active role in the American labor movement:
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
-by Elliott J. Gorn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jun 2, 2015
https://books.google.com/books?id=9gRpCAAAQBAJ
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
(see esp: “john h walker”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
The Court-Martial of Mother Jones
– ed by Edward M. Steel
University Press of Kentucky, Jan 13, 2015
https://books.google.com/books?id=5KEeBgAAQBAJ
Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
Autobiography of Mother Jones
http://charleshkerr.com/book/27
https://www.akpress.org/autobiographyofmotherjones.html
https://www.akpress.org/autobiographymotherhardcover.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~